Meet Gatsby: Connect With Like-Minded Foursquare Users Around You

After going off a bit this morning on how content personalization and recommendation engines can be the death of free thought and lively debate, we figured we’d send you off into the weekend with a fun little gadget we found in the process – a social recommendation service for Foursquare called Meet Gatsby.

Meet Gatsby works alongside Foursquare, keeping track of your check-ins, making recommendations when people with similar interests check in nearby.

We’re immediately reminded of Ask Jeeves (now Ask.com) as we are cordially greeted by Gatsby when we arrive at the site. Gatsby, you see, is here to help you, personally, meet like-minded people while your out on the town.

“Hi, I’m Gatsby,” reads the site. “I’ll introduce you to nearby people with interests you share, whenever you check in on Foursquare.”

Signing up for the service takes five minutes, tops, and you’re ready to go. Simply sign up with your Foursquare account, add interest keywords and a phone number, and you’re ready to go. Immediately, you’ll receive a text saying “Hi, I’m Gatsby. I’ll be texting you from this number when I find matches for you nearby.”

From there, all you need to do is check in with Foursquare and Meet Gatsby will handle the rest.

When we discussed Robert Scoble’s blog entry this morning on how location based services need to use a malleable social graph to remain competitive, it was precisely this type of service that he alluded to and we agreed on.

Games and virtual items will not keep Foursquare, Gowalla or any of the other LBS out there afloat, but adding context and connection will. Meet Gatsby acts as a perfect layer on top of Foursquare to give it something it’s missing – a link to like-minded people around you.

From what we can see on the Meet Gatsby Twitter account, the service is relatively new and taking input on new features. It looks like we can look forward to some additional settings and functionality in the future, such as different match radii in different cities and Twitter DM notifications.

For now, it looks like a really interesting idea that we’re going to give a run out on the town this weekend. Meet you out there?